


i would kill for you (die for you)

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Series: a softer animorphs [9]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragon Age Fusion, Alternate Universe - Dragon Age: Inquisition, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Murder, Red Lyrium, am I the first person to think these two are an obvious match?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: I would kill for you.  But then again, I like killing.  (I would die for you.  But then again, I like dying.)The Inquisition has closed the Breach with their Herald's help, and Haven is one sprawling celebration.  Tobias is looking forward to life resuming normality, for whatever value he can manage these days, what with the strange new cohort of friends and the glowing green palm.Life does not resume normality.





	i would kill for you (die for you)

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, yes, in my inimitable skill I totally forgot to post on Wednesday. Also I think we have reached the end of my pre-written Animorphs stuff, so I'll have to actually start putting in effort again.
> 
> Honestly I'm so disappointed in everyone for not combining these two universes, like, c'mon y'all. I don't know if I'll continue this fic, but I have a whole flotilla of headcanons about who everyone is in this. I recommend Lose Your Soul by Dead Man's Bones as an all-around excellent Dragon Age song, particularly for this bit. Also there's some murder, but like, it's remarkably tame murder.

There was dancing going on below, fires ringed by laughing people glorying in the victory at the Breach.  Tobias, sitting on the back of one of the guardian statues in front of Haven Chantry, tucked his chin against the arm wrapped around his knees and kept watch.  His hand still glowed dimly along the line of the mark, but it was a shadow of the brilliant light from before, the prickling ache faint and almost vanishing.

“Herald,” the Seeker said behind him, and he tried not to startle.  Jake was still dressed in his armor—Tobias couldn’t judge, he hadn’t been willing to surrender his own either—and there was a tension lining his face.

“They’re happy,” Tobias said absently.  The guardian statues weren’t particularly large, leaving him on about eye level with the tall Seeker, and Jake came to stand beside him.

“You saved their lives today,” Jake observed.

Tobias flicked a hand nervously.  “We all did.  I’m just.”  He flexed the hand with the mark.  “Unlucky.”

Jake gave a faint grin at that.  “Well,” he said.  “Be that as it may.  Still, they deserve the chance to celebrate.  I’m told they’ve been at it all day.  You could join them, if you wanted.”

Tobias shook his head.  “I don’t feel like it,” he said.  The spring of anxiety was winding tighter in his chest, like the air before a storm, and the break coming felt…dangerous.

“I know the feeling,” Jake said, humor vanishing.  “I feel like we’re waiting on the other shoe to drop.  Rachel feels it too.”

“The Commander?” Tobias asked, startled by the idea of the fierce woman demonstrating even a trace of strain.  Even when she joined the party hunting rifts and Templars and apostates in the Hinterlands or the Storm Coast, leaving Jake in command of the forces, Rachel was all fearless, ferocious joy in battle.  “I’d have thought she’d be looking forward to the other shoe.”  It was a poor joke, shallow, but earnest.  Rachel probably would have laughed at it, Tobias thought.

Jake laughed a little, too, still looking out at the crowd.  “I think she just got sick of sitting still and waiting for trouble.  Some of the Templars were getting edgy, too.”

“I just think—is that the warning bell?”  Tobias slid down from the back of the statue as, below, the festivities came to an abrupt end.

“It is,” Jake said, grim.  He stepped forward to the edge of the embankment and swept a look over the crowd, until he saw the tightly pinned blonde hair and black-brown ruff of fur that marked Rachel moving rapidly toward them.  “Commander!”

“Seeker,” she said, breathless, as she reached the top of the embankment stairs.  She tossed Tobias a crooked smile and added, “Herald.”

“Commander,” he said, ducking his head briefly.  “What’s happening?”

She set her jaw and pointed out toward the mountains.  “An army is massing outside our walls,” she said. 

“Massing, _ha_ ,” Marco said, appearing out of the shadows in his dark cloak.  Tobias didn’t twitch—the spymaster’s vanishing act was only impressive for so long before it stopped making a person jump.  “It’s _done_ massing, my dear Commander.  It’s _here_.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Jake said, cutting their usual argument off.  “No bickering, please, we’ve got things to do.”

“Hey,” Tobias said, grabbing the nearest civilian by the arm, a young man who startled and blushed violently at being under the eye of the Herald.  “Can you go get us Ambassador Cassandra?  She might be able to help us if this becomes a negotiation.”

Rachel was already shaking her head as the young man dashed away.  “There won’t be a negotiation, Herald.  They’re not marching under any colors.”

Marco swore colorfully, and Jake clenched his fists. 

Tobias scowled and asked, “For those of us who grew up Dalish, that means _what_ , exactly?”

“No colors means this isn’t an act of any established force,” Rachel said.  “A raid, not a war.”

“You don’t do a _raid_ with an entire army,” Tobias said, tossing an arm toward the gates.  “Trust me, I know what a raid looks like.”

“It’s a raid if you don’t give terms or declare war,” Cassie said as she walked up.  Her usual intricate braids were in place, but instead of finery, she wore a scout’s gear.  “We’re going to need--”

There was a thunderous, shuddering boom.

“That’s the gate,” Rachel said, already moving toward the noise.  “Andraste bless ironwood.”

Jake whirled to Tobias.  “Herald, you’d better go with her, I’ll follow.  Cassie and Marco, we might need to move these people to safety quickly, but for now, arm who you can and keep those you can’t back.  Someone find the Qunari, he’ll be a help when this comes to a fight.”

“Got it,” Marco said, and Tobias didn’t linger to see what happened next.  Instead he leapt straight off the embankment and landed in a crouch beside Rachel, staff in hand.

Another boom shook the gate on its hinges and Rachel cursed.

“Move!” she roared, and the stairs cleared at once, letting her pass with Tobias in her wake.  “Archers ready!  Tobias, lightning.”  Tobias nodded and drew on his mana, until electricity sparked through his veins, ready to be unleashed.

“Jake!” a voice shouted from the other side of the gate.  “Please, let me in!”

“Maker’s breath,” Jake said, pushing past the archers toward the gate.  “Rachel, that’s Tom!”

“Open the gates,” Rachel said.  She glanced back at Jake, a brief and silent conversation passing between them.

Jake drew his sword, face set in hard lines that looked almost like grief.  “Stay ready.”

The man on the other side of the gate when it was opened looked exhausted, with the same dark hair and strong jaw as Jake, unmistakably a brother, maybe five years older.  He was slimmer, though, lacking the bulky muscle that Jake bore under the armor, and he was leaning heavily on a glaive.  The blunt end of the glaive was grounded at the center of a starburst of ice, four bodies in various stages of shatter around him.  A mage—apostate, evidently, which Tobias imagined made for awkward family reunions.  Not that he was one to talk, about apostates or awkward families.  Something crackled in the air around the man, not the clean white taste of ice magic but something seductive, almost like music, with the sickly-sweet edge of nightshade.  It made minute lightning bolts net between Tobias’ fingers like the power was seeking an outlet.

“Tom,” Jake said, doing an admirable job of looking like a man who was _not_ seeing a ghost. 

“Jake,” the man—Tom—panted, wiping blood from his face.  “I had to warn you, I had to—can I come in?”

“Let him in,” Jake confirmed, and Rachel’s lips thinned, but she did as he said, directing Tom inward past the line of the wall.  Tobias took a few large steps back, nervous of the strange energy that shuddered through the air.  What he would give for another mage as part of the inner circle, someone to bounce ideas on, someone to back up his theories.  Someone _else_ to tell Jake that his long-lost brother radiated something unearthly and sick and _wrong_.  It was familiar, but amidst the clamor of disaster, Tobias couldn’t place it.

“It’s the mages from Redcliffe,” Tom panted.  “They’re following someone called the Elder One, I don’t—I ran, I came to tell you.  They’re here to destroy the Inquisition.  He wants the Herald dead.”

“Oh, well, as long as they get in line,” Tobias muttered, and caught a trace of a smile on Rachel’s face before the stern Commander’s mask slammed down again.

“You can’t face him,” Tom said, straightening.  He winced and brought a hand to his side, as if to a fresh wound, still clinging to his glaive.  “I—oh,” he said faintly.  His hand came away marked with red, and for a moment Tobias thought it was blood, but no, it clung and writhed—magic, tangles of scarlet light.

“Tom,” Jake said, sheathing his sword and starting forward.  “Tom, are you all right?”

Tom didn’t answer, reaching a shaking hand up to the clasp of his light leather breastplate.  He fumbled with it for a moment before it gave way, the breastplate falling to the ground to show a shallow spike of blood-red stone piercing the skin of his side.  Tom’s hands shook harder as he touched a finger to it, and Jake turned to call for a healer.

“ _Vashedan_ ,” a new voice swore, and Tobias looked up from the terrible sight of Tom’s wound to see the tall blue-grey form of their sole Qunari recruit—more refugee than recruit, until they had the people to spare to get him safely back to the Qun.  Ax narrowed his eyes at Tom, hands tightening on his blades. 

“Wait,” Jake said, bringing everything to an immediate halt.  “Ax, you’ve seen this before?”

“My people remember Kirkwall, Basvaraad Jake,” Ax said tightly.  At Tobias’ side, Rachel’s fingers tapped on her sword, a stress habit he had seen before, when someone brought up Kirkwall.  “As does your spymaster.”

“ _This_ is red lyrium?” Jake demanded.

“Yeah,” Tom said faintly, as the red light spread before their eyes.  “I didn’t…I thought I’d gotten out before I was infected.”

“That stuff,” Rachel said, voice hard, “is pure evil.”

“We’re going to get it out of you,” Jake told Tom quietly.

“You’re not, certainly not in the next few hours before I reach the point of no return,” Tom said, and looked over his brother’s shoulder.  “ _She_ knows.”

“Tom,” Rachel said quietly, lowering her head. 

“Rachel.  Long time.”

“Commander,” Jake snapped.  “Explain, now.”

“Red lyrium infection is permanent, and lethal,” Rachel stated in her coldest, most dispassionate voice.  “It grows out of the individual until it takes them over, turns them into mindless killers.  It’s not like normal lyrium addiction where you can stop taking it and be all right as long as you survive the withdrawal.  It’s _part_ of you—part of him,” she added, looking at Tom.  “You don’t cure it.”

“No,” Jake said sharply.

“I’m _sorry_ , Jake, I won’t watch the Inquisition burn for this,” Rachel shot back.  She glanced at Tobias by her side and added more gently, “I won’t make the Herald die for this, after all we’ve achieved.”  Tobias said nothing—her logic, Tom’s logic, was as undeniable as the slow advance of the ages, but it was a terrible thing to admit.

“Jake,” Tom whispered.  “She’s right.  You can’t face the Elder One with me ready to attack from inside your own walls.”  He straightened, raised his chin, walked back outside the gates.  Rachel followed him, Tobias several steps back, and Marco melted out of the shadows again to grab Jake’s arm.  “I don’t forgive you for Kirkwall,” Tom told Rachel, fierce.  “You damn better get it right this time.”

“I will,” Rachel said, in the tone of a vow.  She reached out, hesitant, and Tom gripped her hand, pale skin against her metal gauntlet.  “I’ll do better.”

Tom gave her a trace of a smile and looked over her shoulder to Tobias, lightning crackling along his staff and green light starting to trickle from his palm again.  “You could do worse than following your Herald.  Could do worse than Jake, too.”

“I always did better as a blunt instrument,” Rachel said, offering a shaky laugh.  Tom laughed, too, raw and shattered.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.  “So did I.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I know.”  He paused.  “Me too.  Take care of him.”  He tipped his head back toward the gate, where Jake was silent, Marco’s arm braced against his chest as if Jake wasn’t strong enough to push past him.

“I’ll try.  Do you want to kneel?”

Tom nodded and slowly, creaking like old wood, dropped to his knees, his glaive laid flat beside him and his hands on his legs.  Rachel stepped around behind him, resting one hand on his shoulder and slipping a knife out of a sheath.  They looked like a painting, a piece of Circle propaganda—the noble and righteous Templar, shoulders wrapped in great bear fur and head crowned in gold, standing over the defeated and penitent mage, head bowed and staff cast aside. 

“Make it quick.”  Rachel nodded, although Tom couldn’t see her, and touched the point of the knife to the nape of his neck, between the first two vertebra.  “And Rachel?”

“Yeah?”

“I forgive you for this.  Remember that, later.”

Rachel didn’t answer, just closed her eyes to take a deep breath, then opened them and thrust the knife through his skin, severing his spine in one blow.  Tom fell like a puppet with cut strings, blood trickling slow from the puncture, dead before he hit the ground.  Rachel sheathed her knife without even wiping away the blood.

“Tobias,” she said quietly.  “Can you bring his glaive?  I have to take him back to Jake before the army gets here.”  The reminder of the army at their back was jarring, shaking Tobias out of the immediacy of the tragedy playing out before him, and he looked back toward the mountains, the field of glowing mage-lights scattered through the trees.

“Okay,” Tobias said, a murmur.  The glaive was cold to the touch, the memory of its wielder’s magic leaving a thin covering of frost to crackle off under his grip.  Rachel knelt down and closed Tom’s eyes, and picked him up in her arms with a huff—dead weight, as tall as she was even if he was far thinner.  Tobias wondered if he should offer to move him with magic, spare her the effort.  Rachel was the strongest person he knew, pure muscle, able to fight all day in her heavy cloak and armor without pause, but this…he didn’t think she would take the help if he offered.

Rachel moved quickly, even bearing Tom’s body, and then they were within the great wooden gates.  Marco released the Seeker, but Jake didn’t do anything, just reached out and touched his brother’s face with a look of raw pain on his features.  Rachel laid Tom on a table as if it were a bier, adjusting his torn tunic to hang straight and folding his hands over his chest, and then retreated, the rare cracks in her composure wiped away.

“He warned us,” Jake said quietly, stroking Tom’s slightly shaggy hair away from his face and neatening it.  “Even after everything.”

There was a long beat of silence before Marco spoke.  “We need to brace for the attack,” Marco said.  “Seeker.  Commander.”  His words drew their attention, but Jake didn’t move, hanging in stasis beside his brother’s body.

“We have to hold the trebuchets,” Rachel said, retreating into the Commander’s persona and squaring her shoulders under the bear fur ruff.  “Haven isn’t designed for a siege, so we have to control the battlefield.  Herald,” she said, turning to Tobias, and he laid Tom’s glaive down beside his body.  She didn’t need to ask.

“I know,” Tobias said.  “I can lead the team to defend the trebuchets.”  It wasn’t _quite_ a suicide mission, but it had to be done, and Tobias could think politically by now—having the Herald on the front lines would rally the Inquisition, show a strong front to their attackers.  He paused, looking at Jake, and said, “I’ll take you, Commander, and Lord Seahawk and Ax, while the Seeker and the Ambassador move those who can’t fight into the Chantry.” 

Rachel gave him an approving nod, and Jake covered Tom’s face with a swathe of silk from the table, setting his jaw and striding out of the gate to meet the bulk of their forces with the others in his wake.

“The Ambassador and I will remove whoever will go, and arm those who won’t,” he said.  “The Chantry isn’t a fortress, though.  If they get inside the city, they _will_ take the Chantry, and everyone left inside.”

“Then they won’t get inside the city,” Rachel said, baring her teeth. 

“Templars!” Jake snapped, whirling on the silent soldiers ranged to one side and drawing his sword, and they stood to attention at once.  The Chantry was shattered, but the authority of the Seekers of Truth had survived its fall, and Jake had always commanded attention as easily as breathing.  “This is your chance to redeem yourselves after the corruption of your leaders.  You _will_ fight alongside every mage in the Inquisition, and you _will_ trust your lives to each other, or we all die.  Am I understood?”

“Yes, Seeker!” they called back.

“Inquisition!” Rachel roared, every bit as fierce and wild as the bear who gave up its hide for her cloak, and she turned on the Inquisition with the blood of her cousin still on her hands.  She didn’t command as easily as Jake, but she knew how to hold the eye—she didn’t need to _know_ how to hold the eye, Tobias thought privately.  She was…unmatched.  Every eye that knew what  was good for it was glued to her.  “Are you ready to fight?  For each other?”  A murmur of agreement.  “For your lives?”  A cry, stronger, bolder.  “For the Herald!” Rachel finished, shaking her sword in the air, and now the Inquisition roared with her, weapons hoisted high in challenge, and Tobias didn’t bend under the weight of their regard for the first time in his memory.

Amazing, what staring an army in the eye did for one’s courage.

Ax stepped forward with his blades ready and a smile hovering around his eyes.  “It is my honor.”

Marco, fingering the fletching of an arrow, gave Tobias a crooked grin.  “Well, better to be doing something, I suppose.”

Tobias looked to Rachel, and she looked back.

“Commander,” Tobias said quietly.

“Herald,” Rachel returned, fists clenched tight.  “Let’s do it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am [on Tumblr](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/) if you want to hear more of my headcanons about this universe.


End file.
